


More than Perfect

by madeofheart (nerdofthenile)



Series: Oppositestuck [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: A bit cute, Angels, Eridan is the best moirail, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Nightmares, Oppositestuck, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Paralysis, Poor Vriska, Shoosh-Papping, Trauma, very fluffy!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 14:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11210076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdofthenile/pseuds/madeofheart
Summary: Vriska has more insecurities than she can count, and her past haunts her dreams.Her moirail would like to remedy that.(An Oppositestuck fic taking place in the middle of the game on LOWAA.)





	More than Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> AGH, I have rewritten this no more than five times and have edited it twice. I'm sorry that this took so long, but I think its finally up to standards. Honestly, Erivris is one of my guilty pleasures, and PALE Erivris is the best when its written well, so I hope I didn't disappoint? Ahaha… 
> 
> Warning, this is super tooth rottinglly fluffy. Also Vriska is really down on herself, so just a warning too. 
> 
> Alrighty, I hope you enjoy! Thank you for reading!

_ The cliff is a steep drop down, the wind is whipping your hair around, your dress is itchy, and you're terrified. _

 

_ What you want to do is run away. You want to be anywhere but here. Safe, up in your hive, in the density of your forest home, away from the cliffside and above the troll-eating creatures below you, where the only murderous troll around was your neighbor and he didn’t want to kill you. You wanted Arachnamom with her cute little scuttle and her fussiness over the simplest things, like which skirts you wore or how you braided your hair that day.  _

 

_ You shouldn’t have campaigned.  _

 

_ He keeps trolling you through Trollian. “pICK A CARD, yOU USELESS WASTECHUTE,” he sent you, “pICK A CARD, pICK A CARD, pICK A CAAAARD!” _

 

_ You didn’t want to pick a card. You didn’t want to be killed either, but the creatures around you seemed to have different plans. They clacked and snarled at you, each had a visual of their stats fluttering above them and you wanted none of it. Your dress swirled at your ankles in the wind, lashing your hair around you, and you were afraid that it would get so strong, it’d knock you off the edge. You couldn’t move forward, though. Any closer and the monsters would tear you limb from limb.  _

 

_ You shouldn’t have campaigned today.  _

 

_ You try to troll Terezi, try to troll Aradia, hoping that they would answer you. But neither does. They must be busy with something or other, and couldn’t respond. Or maybe they were just ignoring you…? _

 

_ He sends you more messages, ones that you give pleading responses to. Asking him for help, for him to help you, something, anything. He tells you that you could abscond or pick a card. You didn’t have another choice.  _

 

_ But where would you abscond? Off the cliffside? Into the waiting jaws of the monsters in front of you? What would you do? _

 

_ You tell him the truth, because the truth never fails. “The cards wouldn’t help me,” you tell him over Trollian, “they wouldn’t be in my favor.” _

 

_ He scoffs at you once, twice. He says you look tacky in your Alyss outfit. You’re about to say that you kind of liked  _ Alyss in Purgatory,  _ it was such a cute story, when you feel it.  _

 

_ Pressure on your pan.  _

 

_ It grows, it spreads, you can feel it prodding beneath your skull like a wild lusii. You freeze, you do nothing. You  _ can’t  _ do anything even if you wanted to. It invades everything, your body, your vision, every sense you have is overrun. It’s replaced with something foreign.  _

 

_ You feel yourself turn away from the monsters. Oh no.  _

 

_ You feel yourself stepping closer to the edge.  _ Oh no. 

 

_ You feel the ground beneath you, and then you don’t.  _ **Oh no.**

 

_ And then you’re plummeting, plummeting, the ground is catching up to you and the roar of your blood is in your ears and you think you might be screaming but you can’t tell and then your entire body explodes into pain on impact and you hear a  _ crack  _ and you realize that was your  _ posture column  _ snapping in two and you can’t feel anything but pain and you think your arms must have been shorn off your body or something because you can’t  _ feel them at all--

 

_ ~ _

 

You startle awake to see two worried eyes staring down at you.

 

“You ok?” He says in his own eloquent way.

 

You slowly nod, so you don't worry him too much.

 

Your name is VRISKA SERKET, and you love Eridan Ampora with every amount of pale love in your little body, but most of the time you just feel like you burden him.

 

“You shore?” He asks, smoothing your hair away from your forehead, which is drenched in sweat. “Quite the nightmare.”

 

“Nightmare?” You laugh, shrugging your shoulders the best you can. “Nooooo, no, I'm fine. Totally. Fine. Perfect. No nightmare. Nope.”

 

“You are so good at so many fins, but you are the woarst liar.  _ Ever.” _

 

He gives you a look that borders between concerned and playful. You glance to the side and smile as wide as you can. “Um…”

 

He giggles and kisses your forehead before sitting up and tugging you up with him by the waist, having you lean your back against his chest. That's when you realize you have no idea where you are, much less why you were even lying down in the first place. You decide to take a peek around, glad that you still have your glasses on so you can actually see. 

 

Oh. You’re in Eridan’s hive, on the coast, in the pile. 

 

Well, you  _ thought  _ you were on the coast. Then you hear a screeching sound, loud and high pitched, one that leaves ringing in your ears. You yelp and find yourself scrambling almost on top of Eridan in fear. 

 

He laughs. 

 

“Ha, calm now,” he hushes you, “that’s just the angels.”

 

“Angels?” you stutter, images of ferocious demons coming for you and tearing your face off. Then you remember. 

 

“O-oh, we’re on… um…. What’s your planet…?”

 

“LOWAA?” He giggles, purposefully stuttering on the double-u because he knows that makes you laugh. He succeeds. You can’t help it! It’s only a little laughter though before it dies in your throat. Your nightmare is still too fresh. 

 

“Yeah,” you repeat, “LOWAA.”

 

You remember. You aren’t on Alternia anymore, you’re in the game. Sburb. Feferi’s thing. All twelve of you. And each of you have to beat the quests on your planet in order to get to the “ultimate reward”. Your planet was the Land of Mirrors and Tomes, LOMAT. But because your arms were paralyzed, you couldn’t really do much to fight off imps that tried to hurt/kill you. So Equius, your long-term friend, agreed to finish his quests on his land, the Land of Calamity and Soot (LOCAS), to come and “help” you finish your quests. It was more of a “you sit there while I do everything you can’t” kind of ordeal, though. You weren’t so dumb you couldn’t tell at least that.

 

You mean, you  _ were  _ dumb, but besides the point. 

 

After he “helped” you (you kicked at things while you could and did what you were able to in the quests which wasn’t a lot), you were free to roam around your friend’s planets as you pleased. Equius had gone off to bug people, so that left you with the freedom to explore. Everyone was in a different stage of completing the quests, a few were failing (Sollux, poor thing), and a good portion of them were well into the process, or were done. Equius was one of them. Aradia was another. 

 

(You hope that she and Equius bump into each other on accident, because they are  _ adorable  _ together, and Eq is just being mean about Aradia’s obvious flush crush on him.)

 

Then there was your moirail. Eridan. He, of course, didn’t just beat his planet’s challenges, oh no. 

 

He  _ tamed  _ the planet. 

 

By tamed, you mean tamed. He didn’t hurt a single imp himself. A good portion of them were actually living on the outskirts of his hive, in little clusters. Eridan fed them.  _ Fed  _ them. Fed the Bloodlusts imps who now got flinch U if he wasn't around them. Sometimes they would scamper up to the edge of the ship’s edge, but never inside. 

 

Because his angel consorts guarded the hive and protected him. 

 

Yes, you heard right. Demonic, evil angels. Bloodthirsty consorts. Protecting a troll. 

 

Outside, the angels screech a bit more. “Eri,” you whimper a bit, of course you of all people whimpers, “why are they sc-screeching?”

 

“It’s their wave a sayin’ ‘good night’,” he smiles, “they flit around and shriek a bit to wish their brethren a good night’s rest.”

 

“Do they ev-even sleep?”

 

“They do. But they do it with their visual orbs open? It makes you feel protected more than anyfin!”

 

“How d-do you know so much about them?” You ask, laying your head on his shoulder. “It’s not b-been so l-long… so l-long a t-time, I m-mean, for y-you to g-get to kn-know them.”

 

“Honestly? Dunno. They just like to tell me fins, I guess. I’ve learned a lot from them.”

 

You aren’t very bright at all, but back on Alternia, when Arachnamom was alive, she’d tell you stories about things like angels. And you remember that angels have super rare powers. Powers that can see changes. Like… like…. 

 

“D-do they tell you th-the f-f-fu-future?”

 

Eridan pauses for a moment. 

 

“Mmm,” he hums, thinking, while hoisting you up and moving your ear to his pusher so you can hear it beating. Thump, bathump, thump, bathump.

 

“Not exactly,” he answers you, “hints, reely. Little… nudges? I guess?”

 

“Do y-you know if w-we’ll win? The g-game?”

 

“No, ha, fish I did. That’d solve a lot a our problems!”

 

“D-do you kn-know when w-we’ll win?”

 

“Hopefully sooner than later.”

 

“... d-do they tell y-you about people?”

 

He nuzzles his head into your shoulder and stays silent for a minute. 

 

“What aboat them, angelfish?”

 

Angelfish. He only calls you angelfish. No one else. 

 

It should make you feel nice. Cared for. But it brings a sour taste to your mouth instead. And the weights of your useless arms feel heavier strapped across your chest. 

 

“... do they t-tell you what people think ab-about oth-others?”

 

He contemplates. His hands have embedded themselves into your hair, idly smooth out tangles and basically petting you like a barkbeast. 

 

“They don’t gotta tell me anyfin pike that,” he finally answers, “I can just tell that stuff.”

 

You tip your head up to meet his eyes, full and glossy behind his glasses. “Really?”

 

He nods. “Really.”

 

“Wh-what do y-you kn-know about….” You didn’t want to be that straightforward about what you wanted to know. You think he already knows what you want to know, actually. But why risk it if he’s not joking like he usually does?

 

“What do you kn-know about Kanaya?”

 

He giggles. Your head bounces with the rumblings of his chest. “Um, like, what she thinks?”

 

“... wh-what she th-thinks about me?”

 

His gaze softens and he looks at you. 

 

“She is your friend,” he responds, “and she cares about you in her own special wave.”

 

Special was a way to put it. Last you had seen your friend and possible flush crush, you had visited her on her Land of Rushes and Fumes. When you found her, she was passed out drunk under a group of rushes and her tutu tulle was stuck to her sweatshirt. The imps weren’t fighting her because she smelled so bad. She didn’t recognize you at first and called you Nepeta, then called you Gamzee, then called you Eridan before giving up and plunking her head down into the mud. You didn’t know what to do and you ended up telling Terezi over your voice--dictation device to come and help. The fumes were starting to make you dizzy too, so you ended up leaving. You don’t know if Terezi ever came or not. 

 

“D-does she?” You asked him.

 

“No doubts aboat it,” he grins at you. You hadn’t noticed that he braided your hair sideways until he gives it a playful tug, making you giggle again. 

 

“... Eridan?”

 

“Yeah, Vris?”

 

“... wh-what do yo-you think about me?”

 

He gives one of his inquisitive looks, and his hands twirl curls into your hair, then still. But now that you’ve started, you can’t stop. 

 

“I dr-dreamed ab-about the cliff ag-again. I dr-dreamed about f-falling, and T-Ta-Tav-Ta-Tavros’s voice. A-and what he s-said.” 

 

You gulp in a bubble of air. 

 

“And I keep on remembering the part where he calls me useless and I think that he’s totally right especially now, I mean he was before because I’ve always been useless but thats ultra true now because my arms don’t move and its making me so conscious about what everyone thinks more than usual because I’m always worrying about that, you know, and its really grating on me and this is just another nightmare that's making me think about because I was so scared and he kept on telling me things that I know are true but I don’t want them to be true and--”

 

Pap. 

 

You open your eyes (when had you closed them?) to look up at Eridan, who had at some point laid you back down into the soft blankets and fishing nets of your pile. His hand rested on your cheek so gently, like at any moment you would break. His smile is calming and warm, and he just looks very huggable. 

 

“Don’t stop, angelfish,” he whispers, smoothing his palm on your skin. “Keep goin’.”

 

He says it with such genuine interest and care that you just break under his fingers. You’ve probably talked about this exact thing a million times before, but he still listens to you blab about it. You don’t know why. You don’t want to bore him. But every time, he just makes you spill like this, and every stiff joint in your body just melts in his grasp. 

 

You talk and talk about everything you fear, the looks and the judgement you despise. The worry over how you look. Your stupidity and your incapabilities (you have a detailed list that you memorized). Your lack of proper care for your friends (Terezi and Aradia and Eridan help you so much but what do you give them? Nothing). 

 

Your fear of not being good enough.

 

His hand freezes on your face at that. 

 

He glares at you and his smile wavers. Did you say something wrong? Sure, you’ve never said that before. But like, you thought that was obvious? You were never good enough at anything. You stuttered when you talked. You couldn’t move your arms. You never knew what to say or what to do. You would be tossed away by everyone sooner or later, you were waiting for the day where even Eridan would leave you behind because you weren’t good enough. You dreaded that day. 

 

Eridan unstraps your arms from the chest restraints. 

 

They flop from your chest to your sides. He picks them up and holds your hands close to his own face. You want to feel his skin. You want to pap him in return. But you can’t, can’t even feel him, because you're paralyzed. And you’re useless. Useless, useless, useless--

 

“Perfect.”

 

You stare at Eridan as he kisses your limp hand like a prince in a fairy tale. “You’re perfect.”

 

He presses your palms into his cheeks. “You’re my perfect little angelfish, who’s all soft and giggly and ticklish.” To accentuate his point, he dips down and blows what a human would call a “raspberry” into the crook of your neck where you can still feel. You can’t help but laugh at the sensation. After he’s done reducing you to giggles (against your will), he pulls away and resumes to toy with your hands. 

 

“My moirail, who alwaves listens when I need her to,” he kisses your palm, your wrist, and it’s getting frustrating to not feel him. “The one who sits there for hours while I babble on and who never complains.”

 

He kisses up your arm to your collarbone, where he kisses and kisses and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He goes on. “You make the best jokes. You have the best smile. Your hair and outfit are always impeccable,” he grins against your skin at that, “and you have the best voice on the coastline.”

 

You blush when he mentions your singing, but that doesn’t stop him. “You’re the one Eq wants to protect, not kill. You’re the one Terezi risks her life for because you give her so much joy. You’re the one Feferi never insults, the one Gamzee says is blessed beyond belief, the one Aradia adores and the one Kanaya relies on. The troll Sollux says is kind and the one Kar and Nep never mention.” That one makes you laugh because that’s good news. If either of them mentioned your name, it usually meant they were either grabbing your attention or were out to kill you. 

 

Eridan’s expression softened more as he moved back into your line of vision. “You’re the one Tavros doesn’t know what to do with because he has never felt caring of someone before.”

 

Tears begin to spring to your eyes as Eridan begins to slowly pepper your face in kisses, little ones on your clammy forehead and your nose and your ears. You so desperately want to believe what he’s saying, but that litlle voice is nagging at you that this  _ isn’t true.  _ No one likes you and no one thinks you’re special or blessed. No one except Eridan and Terezi have ever really cared in  _ that _ kind of way. 

 

You wanted to believe him so much, but you were afraid. 

 

Finally, Eridan’s hands come to hold your face in place. He moves close and smiles at you with a type of pale love that only a true moirail can show. And he says, “You are more than good enough, Vriska. And if anyone tells you differently, then always know that I think you’re the pearl of Alternia’s oyster. You will always be more than good enough for me.”

 

His kiss on your lips is chaste and pale, and its wonderful. It sends flutterbeasts down your damaged posture column. You feel empowered in that one moment. You feel great, actually. Like you could move boulders. They're only on your lips for a second, as pale kisses are, but Eridan’s lips still feel like heaven. 

 

Speaking of heaven, as soon as he pulls away from you another screech fills the air. This time you don’t jump. 

 

Eridan sits up from leaning over you and turns to the portside window. He cocks his head and looks back at you. “It’s pretty dark out,” he says, “moby we should go to sleep?”

 

You’re so emotionally taxed and full of pale bliss that all you can do is nod. Eridan doesn’t restrap your arms; instead, he curls up next to you on the pile and tucks himself against you, trapping your arms between both your chests as he takes your numb hands in his. Though you can’t physically feel them, you can…  _ feel  _ him. Not really. But you can imagine that he feels like home and care and safety. And that is enough in this moment. 

 

“Sopor…?” you question with concern. 

 

“No,” he mumbles into your hair, “Imma stay here.”

 

You can’t really argue with him. “Eri?”

“Yeah, Vris?”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For s-saying wh-what you s-said.” You yawn. “You a-are the b-best moi-moirail in the world.”

 

Eridan lights up and snuggles you close. “Thanks, Vris. That means a lot to me.”

 

“It’s true, th-though. Pale for you.”

 

“Paler than the stars, Vriska. Now get some rest with me. We got some long days ahead.”

 

With Eridan by your side at night, the nightmares stay away. And in the morning, you’re glad he’s there to deal with the scary angels that crept in a night and had covered you both in their downy wings. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> AH, it's done! Whew.  
> Next up: the Meteor! Hopefully. I want to get it started soon, and now that exams are wrapping up, hopefully I'll have some time to do it!  
> If you'd like to see anything or have someone's perspective written, tell me and I'll totally see what I can do! 
> 
> Feel free to leave critique/comments!
> 
> Again, thank you for reading! :D


End file.
